


An Indulgence Freed

by mogwai_do



Category: The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 22:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2445566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mogwai_do/pseuds/mogwai_do
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the recent production featuring Roger Allam as Prospero and Colin Morgan as Ariel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Indulgence Freed

Prospero sighed and set aside the last of the papers for his secretary to deal with in the morning. The curtains in his room stirred in the breeze, but the stone still retained the day's warmth, leaving the room a comfortable temperature. The servants had been in earlier to light candles and air his bed, but despite this evidence the emptiness of the room pulled at him.

It was almost two years now, since they had left the Isle. Miranda and Ferdinand were as happy as the day they had departed, which gave him a melancholy kind of pride that he had done as well by his daughter as he could. He had a grandson now as well, who wanted for nothing, full of life and cheer, but he himself felt the lack of it.

Prospero stood and extinguished the candles, sinking his room into soft moonlight and softer shadows, the gauze summer curtains swaying in the gentle breezes. If he could only ignore the sleepless, ceaseless sounds and smells of the city it could almost be as if he had returned to the Isle.

The governance of Milan was little challenge after surviving his first few years on the Isle with Miranda yet a babe. The courtiers jockeying for position had naught on the willful and whimsical workings of the sprites or the callous cruelty of nature, but the endless suits and petitions dragged at him like sinking sand. There was a lack of honesty in court that was wearying not because he could not see the lies and traps they made, but because he could. 

He had wanted his duchy returned as a measure of his power, for Miranda's future, and to ensure that his brother understood that the rewards of treachery were brief and the cost enduring. But for all he had forgiven Antonio's betrayal, the initial gratitude his brother had felt in the wake of Ariel's induced madness had faded entirely now to be replaced by a kind of sullen spite. Antonio would never again challenge his brother, knowing he had neither the strength nor the wit and no longer the element of surprise, but the thousand, needling, spiteful pricks he made wore upon the mind and soul. 

Prospero had made his return in good faith; he had vowed that his attention would be for the governing of his people not for the self-indulgent studies that had once ago consumed him and allowed Antonio his chance. He flattered himself that he had succeeded; the citizens thrived and most of Antonio’s corrupt fellows had been ousted from their positions of privilege and power. Likewise he had endeavoured to lead by example and become the man he should have been when he first took the ruling seat. He had most sincerely repented of his sorcery and he attended Church now more than he had since he had been a child. Yet for all his efforts, there had been no salvation, no succour. His prayers remained hollow; empty, echoing things that did nothing to allay the heaviness of spirit that dragged at his mind as chains had once dragged at his limbs on the way to the boat and his exile.

Slowly, Prospero slid between the cool sheets of his bed, weary but not sleepy, a thousand tasks and problems circling his brain like mosquitoes, none needing more than a moment to swat aside, but taken in all, too many to ignore. Eventually though the weight on his spirit dragged at his eyelids and he slid half-unwilling into a shallow, restless doze.

"Dost love me still, master?" 

A sparrow's weight pulled slightly at his blanket, but the voice was immediately recognisable. Prospero opened his eyes to see the pale, feather-cloaked shape of his former servant.

"Ariel? Why have you left the Isle? Is it not dangerous?" 

The lean and limber figure folded itself cross-legged at the foot of his bed like a cat.

"Dost love me still, master?"

Prospero sat up and the ever-present sounds and smells of Milan seemed a thing far distant. He had studied such things long enough to know a dream when he saw one, yet for all reason dictated this should be, it was not.

"Ariel, why have you come here?" He asked again, though he had no greater expectation of an answer.

A shrug of lithe shoulders, "I go where I will, master, where I am willed."

"I am your master no longer, Ariel, you know this. I gave you the freedom you desired and I have set aside my magic." The sprite had always had a peculiar view on reason, but as a man Prospero could think of no other response.

He was rewarded with a peculiarly birdlike tilt of the head, that was yet so familiar, "But, master, the magic has not set you aside."

Prospero opened his mouth then closed it again. For all his studies, he had heard this could be, but never had he imagined it would be his failing. More often he had read the opposite held true; some sorcerers grasping ever harder for a magic that no longer wanted them, descending further and further into madness and depravity when only extremes called it and not even those for long. He considered: had his prayers rung hollow because no deity would claim that which had already been taken?

"What do you want, spirit? You have your freedom; I have nothing more I can give you." It was an effort of will to keep his frustration from his voice, more so because he was not certain whether it was frustration at Ariel’s lack of answer, or because he indeed had nothing more for the sprite.

He was given another birdlike tilt of the head and the feathers of Ariel’s cloak ruffled in an altogether too natural fashion, "Freedom is empty, master." Ariel unfolded its long limbs and crawled up the bed on hands and knees, light as cat steps. 

Prospero waited, fully aware that he no longer held any power over the sprite and they were fickle, changeable creatures with power that renounced sorcerers such as himself had no hope of matching. Ariel came so close that, even in the near-dark, Prospero could see those deceptively human eyes. 

Then Ariel shifted, twisting to rub its cheek lightly against Prospero's bearded one, like an animal scenting. Enthralled as he had been, Prospero was aware that Ariel's natural behaviour had been restrained; he had seen it unfettered in the other sprites. The freedom of expression that condemned them as unholy in the eyes of the Church had been something he had immediately curtailed in the presence of his daughter. Even once she had come of age and he had eased the restriction, Ariel, foremost among them, had continued to exercise at least a modicum of restraint in the presence of the Isle’s mortals. 

After years on the Isle, Prospero had long since failed to see anything unnatural in it - just as one could not condemn a bird for singing or the sun for rising. The natural instincts of animals were seldom wrong and were not humans animals, also? Sprites some curious admixture of magic and mammal - or magic mimicking mammal as some insects mimicked plants. The touch of lips against his cheek, light as moth wings, oddly did not startle him.

"Ariel," he murmured, "Why did you come?"

The sprite sat back, its weight barely noticeable across his thighs. "The Isle is empty, master." Its lashes dipped as it looked away to the open window and the moonlit city beyond. "There are such games and antics as ever there were, but all the songs are sighs and I feel the lack."

"What lack, Ariel? Surely such creatures as you are, need nothing the Isle cannot provide; I have observed it in all the many years of my exile."

"And so it is, master, so it was. The lack is one foreign that has grown essential; it was the filling of the lack that made its absence clear. Purposeless we needed none, but having it, the lack is all."

Prospero frowned, “It was necessity that I made of you a servant.”

Ariel shrugged, an oddly fluid gesture, “It was a fair bargain and one honoured on both sides.”

Prospero sighed, “Still, it was not my intent to change you.”

"Nature is change; therefore changed is my nature. Why should this surprise?"

Prospero bowed his head at the sprite’s recalcitrance and felt more than saw Ariel shift closer still until its nose brushed the hair by his ear and the sprite’s breath coolly teased his skin. “Dost think you remained unchanged, master?”

And that was it. Something in him uncurled in recognition of the truth: his years on the Isle had changed him and all the many possible years in Milan could not change him back, however devoutly it might be wished. He turned to look at the sprite, the dark hair framing a pale face and eyes that were not as human as they seemed. His hand rose in an absent habit from years past, his fingers pushing into the dark mane, petting as he had occasionally seen Ariel enjoy at the hands of other sprites, as he himself had done for years. He felt something clench inside him as Ariel immediately pushed into his hand, as innocently demanding of affection as a cat. 

“What would you have me do, Ariel?” he asked after a long moment spent simply studying the sprite’s unguarded enjoyment.

Blue eyes opened, “Care for me, master, as once you did; return to the Isle that we may in turn care for you.” The sprite drew back further than it had yet been since it arrived and the shadows that fell about it made it seem inhuman once more. “As once I was thy Ariel, so would I be again.”

Prospero felt his heart sink, “I have duties here, responsibilities.”

“A bargain?”

“Even so,” he sighed. “But one I find wearies me now as others have not.” He reached out and brushed a dark lock from the sprite’s face. Truly the burden of care that had been his mastery of the sprite had weighed but lightly upon him.

Ariel turned into the brief caress before meeting his eyes again, “Then end it.”

Prospero shook his head, “I cannot, not yet.” He watched as Ariel’s head bowed in defeat and the sprite at last turned to the window by which it had entered.

“Ariel?” he called and watched the spirit pause, though it did not turn around. “My brother is a spiteful, rancorous creature and my daughter, for all her wisdom, believes ill of no-one. I cannot leave Milan to her while he yet has teeth.”

The straightening of the sylph-like figure brought a bright warmth to his chest and he found he could not regret the decision he had not known he had made until he had spoken it. The strained tolerance with which he bore his brother’s endless jabs would be a mercy to release. 

“And when your brother is toothless and your daughter ready?” the sprite asked softly.

Prospero proffered a smile, “Then I would be free to make whatever bargain I desired.”

Ariel’s lips did not curve, but the warmth of a smile was in its eyes.

“It will take time,” Prospero cautioned, “My brother has allies yet, both here and in Naples.”

Ariel’s smile was near-blinding as it turned on the spot and glided soft as down to the bed once more. “Time is the province of mortals,” it announced carelessly, pleased.

Prospero shook his head in fond exasperation, “As I am, Ariel.”

The sprite waved his comment away with an airy hand even as it climbed once more onto the bed and almost into his lap. Prospero found his arms curling around the lithe figure, though it needed no help to stay balanced, and its weight was so slight as to be barely there at all.

“And if time is of so little consequence?” he asked even as the sprite pushed its face against his throat as one might seek comfort from a parent.

“Then, being there no other impediment, might we not seal our bargain now in advance of the day to come?”

Despite himself Prospero chuckled, “I thought time was of no consequence?”

A small, displeased sound escaped from somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder and he curled his arms a little tighter and shifted so that he could lie down once more, the sprite adjusting to nestle against his side, “Very well, but I would not have you be a servant once again, there is no need of it.”

“I would,” Ariel’s voice was soft.

Prospero turned his head and pressed a kiss to the dark locks, inhaling the scents of the Isle tangled amongst them, home in a way Milan no longer was. “No,” he replied equally softly, feeling his limbs relax as they had not done since his return to the city. “I would that you were simply my Ariel.”

As sleep reached out to claim him he felt the sprite curl closer still around him and its whisper followed him into dreams.

“As you are my master, my Prospero.”

FIN


End file.
